Data analysis can often become a cumbersome endeavour, especially when you’re simply looking to generate new insights or are simply trying to build an overall picture of the performance of your online business. With endless amounts of data structured into rows and columns in Excel spreadsheets, data analysis can be a mundane and time-consuming task. However, there’s still a great deal of value in the application of that data, when you’ve managed to piece it all together to help visualise how to achieve your business aims, that is.
By mining large data sets using web scraping tools and analysing your collected ‘big data’, there’s a lot you could learn about how you could generate more revenue online. This step becomes much more easier if you correctly analyze your data with visualization. You could simply create a custom map from raw excel data and significantly improve your data analyzing process. Here’s a few ways in which you can easily use ‘big data’ to fuel your online business.
Google Trends
The sheer amount of data collected from us by Google each day is entirely unimaginable and it’s perplexing to even think about how they process and store it all, before then repurposing it and giving it back to us free of charge in the form of Google Trends. This ‘big data’ tool offers users an extensive library of keyword search insights that can effectively tell you what people are searching for, and when. Not only that, but you’ll also be able to see a wealth of other keywords that are being searched too that are related to what you’re selling, giving you the chance to attract new visitors to your website.
Social Media
With the vast array of social media platforms available to us it should come as no surprise to say that goliaths such as Facebook and Twitter offer ‘big data’ insights and analytics to their users. Millions of people interact with each other on a daily basis using these mediums, so gaining an insight into your target audience and the performance statistics of your business page can give you a healthy advantage over your competitors. By using this data regularly, you’ll learn how to refine your technique and adapt it to the ever-changing social media environment.
Web Scraping
Access to industry data is crucial information for any business owner to know, but unfortunately sometimes you may be looking for something that the ‘big data’ elite companies can’t provide – site-specific insights. As a business owner, it’s always beneficial to gain more knowledge on how to attract new customers, so by using web scraping tools on relevant high-traffic websites you’ll be able to gather insights on what your customers are looking for. From there, you’ll have the chance to develop a statistical hypothesis on how to attract potential customers based on your collected ‘big data’ set.
Remarketing
The emergence of cookies gave rise to one of the most effective ways of using ‘big data’ and their ubiquity has changed the landscape of digital advertising, where several large companies that collect cookies data now provide insights to business owners that are looking to improve conversion rates. Remarketing works by embedding a cookie into your browser when you visit a website to look at a particular product, then when you leave the site and access another site the same product will display to you in one of the ad regions.
Essentially, the cookie will aim to remind you that you browsed a particular product in the hope that you purchase the product you previously viewed. Whilst this may seem a little invasive, it’s a popular method of improving online sales and provides you with data insights into customer buying habits and online behaviour.
Summary
In summary, whilst gathering and analysing data is a highly effective way to fuel your online business, remember that you don’t always have to do all of the hard work yourself to generate insights and gain an edge over your competitors. There are plenty of ways to use ‘big data’ to understand exactly what your potential customers are searching for and what their buying habits are, so you can stay ahead of the game and improve the performance of your online business.